The British poker ace, the 'perfect' murder he got away with for 16 years - and how his luck finally ran out

They call it Sin City and Marcus Bebb-Jones had just enjoyed some of the more dubious pleasures Las Vegas had to offer.
In three days of excess, he’d spent thousands on designer clothes, strippers, prostitutes, cocaine and a mountain of gambling chips at the 24-hour card tables and roulette wheels at the vast resort hotels in the American desert.
Finally, with his wallet empty and his credit cards maxed out, the 30-something Briton drove his rented Ferrari to a luxury hotel, adjourned to a suite and wrote a suicide note to his wife, Sabrina, the mother of his three-year-old son, Daniel.

Marcus Bebb-Jones has finally been sentenced for the murder of his wife Sabrina Bebb-Jones who disappeared from the hotel they ran in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1997

‘Sabrina . . . I can’t change who I am,’ it read. ‘I understand your anger, but now as the years pass, that will diminish. 
‘This is the only way I can be without you or Daniel. Please don’t hate me. Marcus.’
Then he put a single bullet into a .25 calibre handgun, stuck the muzzle into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
That was September 19, 1997. This week, almost 16 years later, the truth was finally revealed about that apparently heart-rending suicide attempt — and Bebb-Jones’s supposedly miraculous survival.
At a court in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the 49-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the brutal murder of his wife four days before faking the suicide bid in an elaborate attempt to evade suspicion.
Overweight and balding, he admitted he had killed his Vietnamese spouse ‘in the heat of passion’ and left her body to rot in the Rocky Mountains, then drove to Las Vegas, where he partied for 72 hours using Sabrina’s credit cards.

The Kidderminster-based IT consultant Marcus Bebb-Jones went on to make his fortune on the poker circuit

When the cards stopped working — he had spent almost £4,000 and had another £4,500 declined — he decided to pretend his murdered wife had walked out on their marriage, prompting him to take his own life.
Prosecutors claim he deliberately turned the pistol to one side before pulling its trigger, so the bullet passed through his cheek, causing only minor injuries. With Sabrina officially classified as ‘missing’, Bebb-Jones was able to return to Britain. 
He took up residence in a modest semi-detached home on a quiet cul-de-sac in Kidderminster and began earning a living on the British poker circuit. 
‘He thought he had committed the perfect crime,’ Sabrina’s brother, Robert Dang, told reporters. ‘He continued to live the good life and thumbed his nose at my family.’

Bebb-Jones exiting a transport van at he arrives after extradition from Britian at Garfield County, Colorado

The net only began to close in 2004, when Sabrina’s skull was found by a cattle rancher in a remote meadow in Garfield County, Colorado. Local police launched a murder investigation and by 2009 had enough evidence to file charges.
Bebb-Jones fought extradition for two years, but was eventually sent to the U.S. in February 2011, after local authorities agreed not to seek the death penalty. He initially protested his innocence, but changed tack this month after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors.
They agreed to drop charges from first degree murder to ‘second degree murder in the heat of passion’, which carries a shorter sentence.
The guilty plea prevents what would have been a blockbuster trial involving more than 12,000 pages of evidence that in parts reads like the script for a Hollywood thriller.
Legal papers tell how Bebb-Jones moved to the U.S. from the West Midlands in the late Eighties.
He had lost his job in manufacturing and briefly earned a living as a potato picker. Travelling illegally on a tourist visa, he eventually wound up at a backpackers’ hostel in Las Vegas, where he met Sabrina, a hotel management graduate.
The couple married in January 1993 and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, where they bought the run-down Melrose Hotel. Their son, Daniel, was born in February 1994.
‘They just seemed like nice, everyday business people trying to make a go of a local business,’ said Lynne Sorlye, general manager of the nearby Clarion Hotel. 
But the Melrose Hotel struggled financially and behind the scenes it appears Marcus and Sabrina’s marriage hit choppy waters. 
Former employees later told investigators that the couple often argued, due to his flirtatious behaviour with female guests. 
Prosecutors believe that early in 1997, Sabrina requested a divorce.
The prospect of losing contact with his son, along with roughly $130,000 (£85,000) representing his wife’s stake in the hotel, is believed to have been Bebb-Jones’s motive for murder.
On September 15, Bebb-Jones loaded his wife and child into the family van and drove to Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border. 
He told staff at the hotel that they were heading out on a day-long hike. That night, however, he came home without Sabrina. When asked what had happened, he responded that she had stormed off during a row in a shopping mall, where they’d stopped for fajitas.

Bebb-Jones believed he had gotten away with the perfect murder for 16 years before his luck finally ran out

In fact, Bebb-Jones had killed her in the wilderness, leaving the body to be picked apart by wild animals.
It is not known where Daniel was while his mother was being murdered — forensic examination of her skull suggests she was shot dead. 
But prosecutors said this week that his pre-sentencing confession had been accepted — ‘that they had an argument and basically he hit her and she ended up dying’.
Addressing Sabrina’s family, Bebb-Jones said: ‘In the blink of an eye everything changed, and I’m sorry. 
‘We all lost so much and I want to say sorry for Sabrina. I’m so very sorry.’ The day after committing the crime, he was feeling less apologetic, however.
That morning, Bebb-Jones told staff he was off to Las Vegas with Daniel to search for his missing wife. Sabrina still had family in the city, he said, claiming that he believed she might have fled there.
It would be three days before a hotel maid discovered the toddler, alone and naked from the waist down, in a room at the Flamingo Hilton Hotel. He’d been abandoned there for more than 48 hours.
Not long afterwards, Bebb-Jones was discovered by a chambermaid at a different hotel, with what police described as a ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound to the jaw’.  
Daniel went back to Britain, where he was largely brought up by his grandmother, Pamela Weaver.
Today, he is 19 years old.
His father was briefly placed in a psychiatric hospital and interviewed by detectives suspicious about Sabrina’s disappearance.
He told them he’d gone on the gambling and prostitution spree because he felt suicidal and ‘wanted to go out in style’. 
After being discharged, Bebb-Jones sold the Melrose Hotel. He took up residence in Las Vegas and lived for two years on the hotel proceeds, for a time cohabiting with a female blackjack dealer from the Golden Nugget Hotel.

Bebb-Jones spent almost £4,000 of his wife's money gambling in Las Vegas after he killed her

In 1999, he returned to Kidderminster and lived in rented accommodation. He began to earn a living as a poker player, spending daylight hours on gaming websites. After dark, he attended a Nottingham poker club called Dusk Till Dawn.
Neighbours yesterday described Bebb-Jones as a polite, but cocky man, who kept unpredictable hours and every now and then brought lady friends home. 
He holidayed regularly in Thailand and did occasional work in IT, sometimes telling neighbours he was off to China ‘on business’.
Though details of his finances are murky, he is known to have won £90,000 at the Grosvenor Grand Prix Texas Hold’em tournament in 2007 and a place in the final of the £500,000 William Hill Grand Prix in 2006.
His attorneys claimed in court this week that his overall career profits from poker were around £250,000.
His new life first began to crumble in 2004, when Sabrina’s skull was discovered; though the rest of her body had vanished, investigators were able to identify her from dental records. 

Bebb-Jones enjoyed all the pleasures available in Las Vegas

Detectives in Colorado had discovered traces of Sabrina’s blood in the couple’s van in 1997, but in the absence of a body,  they had been unable to file charges.
Near the skull, which, despite decay, appeared to show a bullet hole, investigators also found thistle flowers that matched some found on the underside of the van in 1997. 
By 2009, following an extensive investigation, police were able to file charges and a legal battle began that spanned four years.
Under the terms of his plea deal, Bebb-Jones will serve 20 years — far fewer than the maximum 32.
The 1,000-odd days he has already spent in custody will be counted as part of his sentence.
Back in Kidderminster, his mother is still protesting her son’s innocence, telling the Daily Mail she believes Sabrina was living a ‘double life’ and that someone else killed her.
‘My head is all over the place,’ she said. 
‘I wouldn’t say he was set up. It’s just that the police didn’t look for anybody else. 
‘The basis of the prosecution was hearsay. There’s no evidence. This whole thing is like living in a novel.’
Every novel must run its course, though. And after 16 years and endless plot twists, it seems that the strange case of the poker-playing murderer who faked his own attempted suicide has at last reached its final chapter.

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